Twelve Angry Men? Try One Underworked Woman.

I grew up on jury dramas. You know, the fictional accounts of our court system. Twelve Angry Men with Henry Fonda, To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck, even that episode of All in the Family where Edith holds out against a guilty verdict in a murder trial, I ate them up.

In real life I loved covering trials and did work in courts from local traffic up to the federal level. I could never figure out the juries I watched, though. I would be astounded at how out of the know they seemed. Lawyers would ask them if they’d read anything or heard anything in the news about the case under consideration and one after another would shake their head and mutter, “Nope, nothing.” I could never guess what verdict a jury would come up with. They seemed to not hear the same testimony I did, not look at the same evidence. More than once I would write up a story in advance while a jury was out – then have to frantically toss it out and start fresh when a panel came back with an inexplicable and opposite decision to the one I had.

I harbor a yearning to BE a juror.

Journalists are not welcomed on juries for the most part, though. For years I’d get called to jury duty but never be seated. Soon as they heard that I covered news for the local newspaper I’d be excused. I think lawyers tend to see journalists as harder to sway because they know too much, or think they do, about how the justice system works or about the facts of individual cases.

But I’m a professor now so I was excited to get a summons for jury duty in Albany County late last year. Unfortunately it was for a term starting when I was to be working overseas, so I called and postponed. No problem.

The second summons, wouldn’t you know, came for a week I also was out of town on vacation. It turns out to be easy to get out of this. When I called for a third postponement because I was teaching during this jury term the helpful postponers asked if I wanted a permanent dispensation. I think they are used to lame excuses.

No it’s my duty. I want to do this, I protested. Really.

When I was summoned for the March 1 term I said this is it and got ready for drama and life and death decision making. I was Juror Candidate 280.

Here’s what the reality looked like:

On Sunday night I called a number and got a recorded message that instructed jurors up to a certain number to report to one court house and jurors up to another number to another location. The rest of us had the day off and were told to call again Monday night. I was sure I’d be in court on Tuesday.

On Monday night the recording directed that jurors up to like No. 168 report for the duty and the rest of us should take a day off from our duty and call again Tuesday night.

On Tuesday night the recorded voice said the term was over, thanked us for our contribution to American justice, and assured us that we would not be called again for jury duty in less than six years.

Six years? I didn’t even see the inside of a courtroom much less attend to tense legal wrangling or get sequestered.

I feel guilty about getting off so easy, but friends around the country, not just Albany, assure me that this is normal now. “I sat on my butt and surfed the net,” my niece told me. My friend Julie wrote: “The first time I got rejected for being a journalist. The second time, had a nice lunch in a new part of town. The third time I got all my Christmas cards written. The fourth, never even had to show up. It’s kind of like a little vacation!”